Celestial Cacophony

March 24… 4000 Casualties

Filed under: AP English — Z @ 7:14 am

As I write this entry on March 24th (Momma Z’s birthday), the news  is announcing that with the death of four more American soldiers in Iraq, the death toll has now climbed to 4000 servicemen and servicewomen killed in Iraq. Everybody deals with death in war a little differently:

“No casualty is more or less significant than another; each soldier, Marine, airman and sailor is equally precious and their loss equally tragic,” said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the U.S. military’s chief spokesman in Iraq.

Crane and O’Brien are no different. Each depicts death in his own way just as each soldier deals with death (impending or actual) in his own way.  Chapters 9-10 in RBC are an excellent example of Crane’s technique. Explain his technique and what effect this has on the reader. Be sure to explain both the reader’s experience and the experiences of the other characters. O’Brien employs different strategies for dealing with the very difficult subject. Discuss O’Brien’s technique from at least three different vignettes. As always pair text with commentary.  

            In the vignette “Friends” O’Brien deals with death by creating the idea that it is an escape.  In this part of the book it says “Later we heard that Strunk died somewhere over Chu Lai, which seemed to relieve Dave Jensen of an enormous weight.”  In the story Lee and Dave make a promise to kill each other if they ever end up in a wheel chair.  But when Lee gets his leg blow off he asks Dave not to kill him.  When Dave hears that Lee was died it took off the pressure to keep his promise.

            In the vignette “The Things They Carried” O’Brien tells us about Lieutenant Cross who lost a man because his mind was on something besides the war.  It says, “He felt shame.  He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war.”  Cross deals with this death by blaming himself.  He thinks he could have prevented the death of Lavender.  O’Brien shows the reader that the characters are real, by having them make mistakes. 

            In the vignette “The Dentist” O’Brien shows that the death of a person can only really affect you if you personally knew the person.  It says, “When Curt Lemon was killed, I found it hard to mourn.  I knew him only slightly, and what I did know was not impressive.”  He is saying that Curt Lemon did not affect his life.  His life was not a big part of Tim’s.  The Death of Curt Lemon did not seem like a loss to O’Brien because he did not affect Tim in anyway, therefore not having something to loose.  O’Brien is saying that the death of a loved one will affect the ones that loved the one that died.  O’Brien deals with death by saying that it didn’t affect him any.  But clearly it did because he ended up writing about it. 

Filed under: 1, AP English — Z @ 8:04 am

Comrades: Yet another word we use without understanding the etymological significance. Tim has comrades; Henry has comrades. Check out this definition and etymology at Dictionary.com and compare that with Henry’s relationship to his comrades in the first fifteen chapters and of O’Brien’s interrelationship characters (especially in “Friends and Enemies”). Pay particular attention to the way the characters are revealed. A comrade is a person who shares one’s interests or activities or is a friend or companion. This definition is very similar to the way that fellow soldiers reacted to each other in “The Things They Carried”.  In this novel the characters Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen are both soldiers in the U.S. army during the Vietnam War.  Their relationship starts off with a conflict.  “Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen got into a fistfight.  It was about something stupid-a missing jackknife-but even so the fight was vicious.”  Their relationship starts off with a fight.  During the fight Jensen broke Srunks nose.  After doing this he thought that he would have to watch his back for the rest of his life, but Strunk never took any revenge.  After a while Jensen went crazy from the fear of Strunks revenge.  So he broke his own nose to be even Strunk.  It says, “But that wasn’t the bizarre part.  Because late that same night he borrowed a pistol, gripped it by the barrel, and used it like a hammer to break his own nose.”  In response to this Lee Strunk says “The man’s crazy, I stole his fucking jackknife.”  After this the two men could work together without fear of killing each other.  “Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk did not become instant buddies, but they did learn to trust each other.”  They became comrades.  They both had a common goal and they were part of the army.   

        Both novels attack the idea of traditional heroism. “On the Rainy River” and chapters 5-8 of RBC explore the idea of the traditional hero. How do our main characters stack up against the traditional norms? What is your definition of courage and heroism? What other experiences or literary works have worked to build this definition for you? How do O’Brien and Crane achieve their goals? What literary spin are they putting on the ball of words to get us to swing? Be sure use quotes from the text and commentary to support your ideas.  

            The main character of The Things They Carried is not a normal person.  He was faced with a decision he did not make, he was selected for the selective service.   This is not like the traditional norm.  This character shows what it is really like to be a human.  He experiences doubt, fear and love.  He is conflicted.  He wants to leave and escape to Canada but he doesn’t want to be embarrassed.  So instead he go to Vietnam as a soldier.  I t says “And right then I submitted.  I would go to the war- I would kill and maybe die- because I was embarrassed not to.”

            Heroism is the ability to encourage and inspire someone through your actions. 
Heroes are people who inspire others to what to be and attempt to be like them.  This is like anybodies role model.  It is who you want to become, not in a physical term but in a psychological term. 

            O’Brien achieves his goal by bringing the main character out to the middle of the woods where he is taken in by a stranger.  This is where the main character stays until he has reached a point of enlightenment, or an epiphany.  The stranger not only lets him stay but he pays him for his work.  It says, “Let’s make it fifteen.  You put in twenty-five hours here, easy. That’s three hundred seventy-five bucks total wages.  We subtract the two hundred sixty for food and lodging, I still owe you a hundred and fifteen.”  The stranger paid the main character for staying with him.  These acts of kindness have led to the eventual realization by Main character that he cannot runaway from his problem.  He learns that he will be embarrassed to have to tell his parents about his criminal acts.  Therefore the stranger has helped the main character realize he must face his problems.  The hero of the book is the stranger whose kindness saved the life of the main character in an indirect way. O’Brien turns a coward into a hero by using a real hero to inspire the coward to change his way of thinking.

“Spin” explores the idea of controlling reality and memory through story. Write a blog entry explaining how this is explored in this chapter. Be sure to explain concepts using detail and commentary.     

         Spin is used in the chapter spin when the author is reflecting back on the war.  It says “I’m forty years old, and a writer now, and the war has been over for a long while.  Much of it is hard to remember.”  The narrator is admitting that he is writing years after the original experience.  This means that he has had other experiences that could have put “spin “on his story.  The narrator could inject ideas into his story that never happened at the time of the story, but may have happened to the same idea or person.          

           Another example of “spin” is the use of tranquilizers during the war.  The author tells us that the war is the replaying of bad stuff over and over again.  But then he tells us it wasn’t always like that.  It says “Like when Ted Lavender went too heavy on the tranquilizers.  “How’s the war today?” somebody would say, and Ted Lavender would give a soft spacey smile and say, “Mellow, man.  We got ourselves a nice mellow war today.””  The tranquilizers were used by Ted to escape reality.  He used them to put a “spin” on the war.  They made him think that the war was “mellow” when clearly war is never mellow or calm. This is self evident through the use of the tranquilizers to calm him down.  Ted Lavender puts his own spin on the war when he says “We got ourselves a nice mellow war today.”  He is combining his own wants and beliefs with reality to create a reality that he can deal with.

 List and explain 5 tangible things and five intangible things the soldiers from your stories carry.
tangible
1.) toothbrush
2.) tent
3.) steel helmet
4.) guns
5.)kool-aid

intangible
1.) fear
2.) uncertainty
3.) faith
4.) memories
5.) dignity

Answer this question: “What do you carry?” List and explain what you hump around life, both tangible and intangible.  

1.) glasses – to see
2.) wallet – holds my money and license
3.) faith
4.) memories – of the past
5.) thoughts – ideas
6.)plans – what it is that I want to do

1. Consider first Herbert’s use of metaphor and personification. In each case, what two unlike things are being compared, and what do they have in common?

            Herbert compares a Sweet day to the bridal of the earth.  “Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, / The bridal of the earth and sky,” Another comparison is the sweet rose to the root in its grave.  Another comparison is the spring to a song.  All of these metaphors all will die.

2. How is the poem structured, and how does this structure support its meaning? Consider parallelism, order, and the turn in the poem.

            The poems first 3 stanzas look at nature and how all living things die.  But at the end of the poem It talks about a “virtuous soul” and how it “chiefly lives”  This is saying that those who are not good people will die.  But those who are good will go to heaven and have eternal life.

3. How does the prosody reinforce the poem’s meaning?

The prosody of the reinforces the meaning of the poem because the first three stanzas have ending rhyme with the word “die”, this gives the first three stanzas a negative vibe.  But in the last Stanza the en rhyme is with the words “gives” and “lives” which have a positive connotation.  This enforces the main ideas of the poem.

1. What is the occasion of the poem? What literary device does the poet employ?

Describe what you know of the speaker, the listener, and the “she” referred to in the poem.

            The poem is about a guy sending a rose to someone he wants to date.  The rose symbolizes his love for her, even though he doesn’t know her at all.

2.) Paraphrase each of the four stanzas.

            Go rose to tell her that I think of her a lot, of her beauty

            Tell her shes young and pretty.  That is the reason for this rose.  Love before it is too late.

            It’s a long shot , to get this beauty to come out  and be loved and admired

            She will die like all living things.  So we must share what time we have and cherish it forever.

3. Describe the prosody, including stanza form, rhyme, meter, and notable metrical substitutions (spondees), as well as the structure of the poem. How do these choices help to reinforce the poem’s content?

            The poem has 4-8-4-8-8 syllable pattern.  The rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-b. this like the stanza form.  These similarities enforce the idea of representation.  Like the rose symbolizing the boys love.

1.)    Describe the form and structure of the poem.  What is the occasion of the poem?  What two reasons does the speaker give for refusing to promise a committed love? What compromises does she suggest at the end?

This poem is about the speaker not accepting someone elses love.  It says “Promise me no promises, / So will I not promise you”  She is refusing this love for two reasons, one is “For I cannot know you past, / And of mine what can you know?”  They don’t know each other.  The second reason is the speaker is no the loving type.  It says “I, so cold, may once have seen / Sunlight, once have felt the sun:”  At the end she suggests being the “friends we were.”

2.)     Analyze the effect on meaning of such devices as syntax, repetition, parallelism and paradox.

The author uses the repetition of the word promises to show that the promise of love would mean nothing.  This is because the repetition of the word takes its meaning away.  The paradox “promise me no promises” is used to show that the speaker doesn’t want to be married.

3.)     Analyze the effect on meaning of imagery and figurative language.

The use of the image, “If I promised, I believe / I should fret to break the chain.”, creates an image of the speaker with a ball and chain.  She is saying if they were to wed she would be the one to break it off.

1. What imagery does Shapiro use in the first three lines to evoke sound and sight?  How doe these images become increasingly significant in the context of the entire poem?

            The imagery in the first 3 lines depicts an ambulance rushing down the road with its sirens ringing.  The lines depict the ambulance as a blur beacuase it is moving so fast.  It says “Its quick silver bell bleating, bleating, / And down the dark one ruby flare / Pulsing out red light like an artery.”  The ambulance is moving fast and is blured its sirens are also going of in time, like a heart beat.  This signifies the importance of the ambulance.  The people in the auto wreck need help.

2. On the literal level, what contextual significance do the following words and phrases have: mangled (line 9), “tolls once” (line 11), “terrible cargo” (line 12), “rocking, slightly rocking (line 13), deranged and composed (lines 15 and 16).

            The word mangled is used to represent the people injured in the accident.  “Stretchers are laid out, the mangled lifted / And stowed into the little hospital.”  They are being moved into the ambulance where they can get help.  “Tolls once” means that the siren went of once to warn the people around that it is moving.  “Terrible cargo” refers to the injured people in the ambulance.  “Rocking, slightly rocking” is how the ambulance is moving as it leaves.  This is like the rocking of a cradle.  The ambulance is putting the people’s minds at ease.  “Deranged and composed” refers to how the world continues to move on. The traffic is re routed, it says “walking among the cops / Who sweep glass”.  The road is cleared for the traffic.

3. Analyze the metaphors in lines 3, 18, 22, 29-30.  What pattern do they create and why is it appropriate to the poem?

            Line 3 “Pulsing out red light like an artery” The lights on the ambulance are flashing on and off like a heart beat.  Line 18 “ One with a bucket douches ponds of blood”  Ponds of blood signifies that there is a lot of blood.  Line 22, “Our throats were tight as tourniquets”  means that there throats were tight because of shock and nervousness.  Lines 29-30, “But we remain, touching a wound / That opens to our richest horror.”  Mean that the people in the accident will be affected by the accident longer that those who have to wait to get by on the road.  These metaphors compare things to the area around them such as tourniquets, flashing lights and blood.  This creates a mental image of the scene.

4.      What is added to the theme of the poem by the metaphors in lines 20-21 and the simile in 24-27?

The metaphor in lines 20 -21 says that people in the cars could only get out of them through death.  They were trapped in the cars like a locust in its exoskeleton.  The simile in lines 24-27 shows how people will watch but soon forget what has happened.